[HN Gopher] Master of Orion ___________________________________________________________________ Master of Orion Author : simonebrunozzi Score : 120 points Date : 2022-05-09 06:14 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.filfre.net) (TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net) | rzwitserloot wrote: | There is an excellent remake (with an active modding community | and real tricky AIs if you want to enable them) available; open | source, no less! | | Remnants of the Ancients: https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of- | the-precursors | hyperpl wrote: | I believe I tried this a year or 2 ago but I've always favored | https://gitlab.com/Tapani_/1oom as I feel it delivers the | closest experience to the original - also I prefer the old | pixel graphics. | NikolaNovak wrote: | Merci; Purchased, we'll see how it fares :-> | | (though I've historically been more of a Moo2 / MOOII fan :) | rhn_mk1 wrote: | How true to the original is it? | Pxtl wrote: | TIL that the the term 4X was coined by a guy who thought | | > that Civilization's inclusion of global warming as a threat to | progress and women's suffrage as a Wonder of the World | constituted some form of surrender to left-wing political | correctness | | ... ick. | seanwilson wrote: | Are there any games like Civilization and Master of Orion where | the number of units and choices in the later game don't get so | overwhelming? I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the | early game. | | It's not the same kind of game or as grand in scale, but I really | enjoyed Into the Breach because each turn you only have a limited | number of choices and units each turn, and each choice feels | important. | Pxtl wrote: | Imho, that was the charm of Orion 1 - it was flawed about it of | course, but the basic ideas that | | 1) You didn't have to manage individual buildings, they were | just priority bars on planets... | | 2) Ships of the same class stacked. | | meant that scaling up the empire wasn't the kind of tedious | nightmare we see in more civ-style 4X games. Sadly Moo2, while | a superior and more polished game than Moo1, moved away from | this innovation into more conventional construciton and ship | management. | syntheweave wrote: | The most streamlined "4X-ish" I know of is the wonderful | Slipways: | | https://slipways.net/ | | However, it achieves this by eliminating the combat, the | opponent AI, and ways to revise your decision-making, instead | making it more of an economic logistics puzzle with immense | numbers of dependencies to consider on every turn, which makes | some players used to having a build strategy to exploit and an | enemy to beat up accuse it of being "not a game", always a good | sign that you're on to something new and different. | | It's originally a PICO-8 game, which gives some idea of how | compact it is. You can still play that version right now: | https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=30978 | mlindner wrote: | I watched the trailer for the game, but when a selling byline | is "still be done in time for lunch" I immediately go "no | thanks". I want games that are engrossing and suck me in for | hours at a time, not toys that can be picked up and dropped | at a moments notice "on the go". | syntheweave wrote: | Let me put it this way: Most livestreams of this game end | in several minutes of silence staring at the screen. It | needs the intensity of a chess match, not Solitaire. But if | you just want to veg out clicking around the map for hours, | it probably won't satisfy you. | IG_Semmelweiss wrote: | Stellaris does a fantastic job at this. | | Stays relevant until the very end. | hubblesticks wrote: | Agreed. I grew up on MOO2, played too much of it, mostly | hotseat with a friend. | | I tried a few other 4X space games, but none scratched the | itch that Stellaris did. It's the only 4X space game I play | now. And Paradox keeps adding content! | bhelyer wrote: | I quite enjoyed The Battle of Polytopia -- it's a very cut down | Civ style game. | | Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is enjoyable too -- | it's quite simplified (the space marines can only build the one | city, as appropriate for a 40k game there's zero diplomacy, | etc). | | Warlock - Master of the Arcane is a Master of Magic spiritual | successor, and I found it a lot less taxing than Civilization | in the late game. | chongli wrote: | _I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the early | game._ | | I suffer from the same problem. I love these games. I've played | Civ 1-5, Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion 2, Master of Magic; | all quite extensively. Every single time I get bogged down in | the late game. I automate my bases/cities/planets with all of | the available automation options and then try to wrap things up | as quickly as I can but it always takes longer than it should. | | I agree with you that the number of choices you need to make in | the late game is overwhelming, and many of these choices are | trivial, but there's an additional problem: you are often so | far ahead of the computer AI opponents that it feels like you'd | have to make some huge mistakes to give them any hope at all. | It can then feel very frustrating that you're so far ahead but | must still go through the whole song and dance to finish the | game. | | What these games really need is a diplomatic option for you to | demand they surrender to you completely and become a | client/puppet of your empire. Furthermore, the AI should always | accept this offer if they can see they have no chance at | defeating you in a war. | bombcar wrote: | It's fine to admit that early game is what you like - it's | true for many across many genres. Many players love Minecraft | up until they get Elytra, and then really want to restart - | optimizing factorio starts was always fun for me. | | It's nice when games acknowledge it as the article mentions - | and some have a "victory" screen with a "keep playing" | option. | | The 4x games are almost between normal games and pure | simulations like the city builders - where the simulation can | become the fun. | pavlov wrote: | I feel the same way. | | It might be fun if the goals of the game turned upside down | when you're winning. The AI players surrender and you're the | newly crowned Galactic Emperor, congratulations! Everybody | works for you. | | Now comes the second half of the game where you try to keep | your empire together while it decays into bureaucracy. In a | thousand years, a Hari Seldon appears and you have to decide | whether to exile him... | [deleted] | ThePhysicist wrote: | Ascendancy is my favorite classic 4X, still have the CD version | and sometimes fire it up in DOSBOX. | thriftwy wrote: | Ascendancy is an example of how gameplay limitations ruin the | game experience. | | In Master of Orion I you could have huge fleets of warships | roaming through the space. | | In Master of Orion II (significantly less successful if you ask | me) there were a mechanics of "control" or smth along these | lines, which limited you from having a large number of large | warships by ramping up upkeep. I guess you could live with | that. | | Ascendancy is nice, but: You can only have N+1 ships, where N | is number of your planets. This means you need to spend 90% of | time developing planets (pushing "next building") with no ways | to utilize your industrial output when not building a ship | replacement. Boredom of managing insignificant colonies by hand | is what ruins many 4X games. | | It would be an understandable limitation if Ascendancy was a | board game, but in a video game it's just a sign that game | designers could not balance the gameplay. | | Otherwise, great game. The music and the races are awesome. | Tech tree is very funny. | ThePhysicist wrote: | Hah, you can just press M (I think it was M?) to automate the | management of colonies. Never managed planets by hand as it's | super boring and a bit pointless as you said. In general the | late game is a bit bland as the AI is not very good even with | the patch they delivered, but still it's quite a fun game and | the 3D view was really innovative at the time. | Inhibit wrote: | AI War and the Dominions series (generally whatever release the | latest one is) are my go-to for that type of engrossing gameplay. | shadowtree wrote: | Playable in any modern browser: | https://playclassic.games/games/4x-dos-games-online/play-mas... | | Enjoy! | christkv wrote: | Master of Magic another cult 4X game is also getting a remake | soon https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/ | hyperpl wrote: | If MOO1 is my favorite game, this is my 3rd (2nd is HoMM3). | Thanks for posting this. Looking forward to purchasing and | playing it. | corysama wrote: | In the mean time, the original Master of Magic recently had a | huge overhaul with a native Windows build and major content | updates | https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_C... | christkv wrote: | Same company doing the remake it seems, will have to check it | out for nostalgia :) | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | I have once played a hot seat game of Moo2 with two friends. I | had an increased production race, one friend had an improved | science race, and second one had silicoids on steroids - he | picked all kinds of maluses to get eating rocks and surplus birth | rate. | | ... and he wiped the floor with both of us, silicoids are OP, | please, nerf. | | Great games and happy memories from childhood. Moo1 was better in | feel, but moo2 was better at actual gameplay. | FredPret wrote: | I always found population trumps all else. So if you have | modifiers like subterranean (higher max pop per planet) plus | maybe a pop growth increase, you're likely to win. | | Another one I always went with was to pick Repulsive (no | diplomacy) since you'll end up at war with everyone anyway. | nurettin wrote: | You can wipe the floor with everyone early using a warlord + | telepathic + trans-dimensional combination. Fire missles and | run around. As soon as the planetary fortress falls, the | planet is yours, no invasion needed. I abused it so much that | friends banned the combination from multiplayer. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | I liked Telepath and silicoid - you skip all food and ground- | combat skills, since you take over planets with your mind! | Better than the Psilon who get all tech branches - you don't | even need half of them! And can do industrial development on | all planets (no wasted population making food) | kadoban wrote: | Really enjoyed this game. | | My real favorite is Space Empires 3 though. Anyone else? | | The multiplayer for that one is especially great. A few friends | and I still play it to this day, it's a blast. | frabert wrote: | I was never able to understand how to "git gud" at that game :( | The AI always seemed to be able to outperform me on any front, | and the only solution was to use ministries for everything, | which turned the game into a battle between AIs | kadoban wrote: | Ah, interesting. | | I'd definitely recommend playing against humans if you can, I | never found the computers quite as fun to play against. | | Which may have helped me avoid that issue, by the time I ever | played against a computer they were pretty easy just because | I'd played my friends a lot. | | If there's any big advice I'd give though, it's just | definitely focus on expanding your production and planets as | quickly as you can near the beginning. | chrchang523 wrote: | Previous discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140337 | giantrobot wrote: | I was always partial to Stars![0] though I did enjoy MOO. It | looked a lot like a Windows productivity app so I could play it | with no one being the wiser. It wasn't as deep as MOO other some | other games but I enjoyed it. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars! | omnibrain wrote: | I remember from around the same time another game in this | windows "productivity" optic. Something with ships. You don't | happen to know the name of that one? | astockwell wrote: | Stars!! Finally another living human who has heard of it. | | I remember finding the limited demo on one of those "101 | games!" $1.99 CD-ROMs, and then tracked down a full version at | some remote Circuit City. Still have the installer and the key, | and occasionally load it up on a VM (plays fine, only needed | like 32mb of RAM :P ) | | A great game, but another one which suffered from the burden of | overwhelm in the late game stages, and was hampered by the un- | expected and abrupt limitation that you could only have 255 | fleets (or some such thing). I read a breakdown that the cause | was due to the designers only using an 8 bit integer for the | FLEET_ID, so once you had that, the game would just discard any | additional fleets you made. | | Ahh, nostalga. | thriftwy wrote: | Civilization, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri | are the four 4X gems. Unfortunately they don't seem to make those | anymore. | zem wrote: | stellaris is a pretty good recentish one. it has the same | quality that the article called out in civ, which is that | you're playing a story as much as a game, and deriving | enjoyment from both aspects. | chem83 wrote: | I thought MOO: Conquer the Stars was a very fair/faithful | remake. It's more of the same, though. | simonebrunozzi wrote: | Nah. I tried it once and was disappointed. It was unfinished, | and barely a copy. Better graphics and sound, sure, but | nothing else. If I recall correctly, the tactical combat | system was real-time, instead of turns, and it had flaws. | There was a community patch as some point that fixed some of | the issues. | Arrath wrote: | SMAC is one of my all time favorites, and I still have an | install directory I move around from computer to computer to | play now and then. | | As another commenter said, Stellaris is a great newer one. A | bit rough on initial launch, but well shaped up after patches | and dlc. | | The Endless X series is another one, but personally they never | clicked for me, feeling oddly soulless and empty. | Pxtl wrote: | Yes they do. The Civ series is still ongoing, Galciv and | Stellaris have taken over for MOO, Distant Worlds came out this | year. Only Master of Magic doesn't get the same kind of love as | Civ and MOO. | | There's even a darned good FOSS implementation of Civ5 called | "Unciv" that I got extremely addicted to. | IG_Semmelweiss wrote: | I disagree. | | I've played all countless hours (except MoM), and I can say | Stellaris is right up there with them. | hyperpl wrote: | Probably my favorite 4X game ever made. Been playing as the | Darloks for the past 6 months on Impossible but looking to switch | to another fun race to play. Any suggestions? | chem83 wrote: | Meklons were fun for the added production boost. Felt like | playing with the Borg. My experience is from playing more MOO2 | than MOO1, though. Playing with a custom race was also fun. | dingleberry wrote: | darlocks can be fun tho, you can win without having any fleet. | | just spy, sabotage missile bases to 0 and then send troops. | Dwedit wrote: | Their ships still shoot down your troops. Then you get bombed | into nonexistence. Trying to take a planet without a fleet | there won't end very well. | billyhoffman wrote: | Get Transports Teleporters, and your troops have a 50% | change to bypass the ships in orbit. If its late game, the | planet you take should have high population and production, | so it can build a bunch of missile bases on the turn after | you take the planet. | i_like_apis wrote: | I remember playing this as a kid. It was always Psilons for | tech dominance, or Klackon for overwhelming population. | | I think I was on a Macintosh Classic II. I miss the 90's. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | The cat-people are the hardest. They have no significant racial | traits. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | It's an amazing game, but it also shows how useful modern UI | affordances are. A star system for scroll wheel support. | bombcar wrote: | I wonder if you could map scroll wheel to arrow keys in dos | box. | bombcar wrote: | For those interested in playing MOO or MOO2 on a Modern Mac - you | can use https://boxer.thec0de.com and open the App that Steam | gives you with View Package Contents and find the .boxer file and | run it with the modern boxer; it'll load just fine (they're all | wrapped dosbox anyway). | | And the strategy guide mentioned is available on Archive.org: | https://archive.org/details/MasterOfOrionStrategyGuide | dwighttk wrote: | I haven't tried boxer since M1... does it still work? | bombcar wrote: | I don't have an M1 to try boxer on - but it works fine on | Monterey on a x64 Intel, so at worst I assume it'd rosetta. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | My favorite win: ally with the Darlok, the reprehensible race. | Share all technology with them profligately. They grow with you | to be the top 2 races in the galaxy. Upon the first election | nobody will vote for the Darlok (a racial characteristic - | everybody hates them) so they all vote for you. Win! | Arrath wrote: | I came of age just a hair late, and cut my teeth on the ambitious | but disastrous MoO 3. What a disappointment that was. | beloch wrote: | The sequel to MOO, and most 4X games made since then, have always | felt inferior to me. MOO was like a game of chess. The rules were | relatively simple, but complex enough to give you the "box of | chocolates" games this article talks about. | | MOO2 bogged you down in micromanaging colony buildings, etc. and | other 4X games made since have added far more complex systems. | The results feels like chess where each piece now has bolted-on | RPG stats that have to be individually micromanaged. The game | becomes more complex, but not in an elegant way. I don't want to | manage maces and chain-mail and morale. I just want to play | chess! | | I haven't really kept up with 4X games. Are there any that have | tried to get back to the basic chess of MOO instead of bolting on | complications that bog you down in micromanagement? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-11 23:00 UTC)